Fable Queen

Y’know. I’m not one to beat the “innovation” drum too hard. Innovation for its own sake can produce games that are often the opposite of fun.  I’m happy with my comfort food JRPGs, Action RPGs, Graphic Adventures and my Metroidvanias. So long as the those games are made be it by AAA studios with mega-budgets or tiny little indie companies, I will be happy. 

I liked all the numbered Fable games. They hit most of my “happy” buttons. The first game didn’t deliver on all its promises and the third game was rushed and messy, but at their core they were solid action RPGs with fun, if shallow, NPC interaction and tons of different ways to build your character. They had a great sense of British wit, including vocal performances from both Stephen Fry and John Cleese, and had a spirit of experimentation that was endlessly rewarding for people who are a bit on the whimsical side. They weren’t the industrial game changers Peter Molyneux made the out to be, but they were good, fun games that I still pop back into the 360 every now and then for a good spin.

What happened after Fable I-III was nothing short of a series of disappointments.

For reasons I don’t understand, the game industry keeps taking proven hits, building fan bases, and then throwing them under the bus by making titles in other genres. I’m not talking about side story games, here. Mario Kart and Mario Party haven’t stopped Nintendo from making proper Mario games. I’m talking about entirely abandoning the gameplay that made a given series not niche popularity, but genuine mass success. The Fable games were big hits that sold millions of copies each. And yet the series ceased to be customizable action RPG series after Fable III. 

We got a Kinect game, and an asynchronous multiplayer title that will now never be released.

Now, why industry execs don’t see this coming, I don’t know. But they keep falling into this trap. Take Metroid Prime Federation Force, for example. The first Metroid game in half a decade is everything Metroid fans didn’t want in their next Metroid game. 

I don’t know why Fable Legends was cancelled, but I know the fact that it wasn’t Fable IV helped to push me to go the PS4 route and not the XBox One route, though, admittedly, Bloodborne might’ve pushed me that way anyhow. 

But if Lionhead isn’t going to chase those single-player Action RPG dollars, someone else will. And make a mint.

As some of you may have heard, Fable Legends has been cancelled and there is talk of Lionhead shutting down. I cannot express to you how devastating this is, and a lot of fellow fans are up in arms about it. Please sign this petition in the hopes that this decision might be reversed. 

Here is another petition for you to sign as well.

Fable Legends was a game that could have breathed life back into the series, and as a beta tester, I can say without a doubt that it would have been a great game. I would have gladly paid money to play it. I would have paid money in micro-transactions just to make sure that it could keep the company afloat. This is a huge mistake on microsoft’s part and we need to tell them that. Please sign. Even if you’ve never played these games before, even if you’re not a huge fan. It would mean the world to me. 

I like the game but it is Very Weird and perhaps Not The Best when it comes to mechanics. The Fable series in general is full of baffling design decisions and features that never quite lose their ‘experimental’ patina, but Fable 3 takes the cake when it comes to bizarre decisions. It was obviously made by people who have been in the business for a long time, who want to address video game conventions, from both a gameplay and storytelling perspective. They want this, but they also want to combine a bunch of different genres to create a richer, more textured experience, but they never quite pull it off with the most grace because the game is pulled in too many directions at once. Which is beside the point because grace is definitely not the series aesthetic, and also because of these two SUPER MOST IMPORTANT FACTS: it is silly and meta as hell, and lionhead studio is like the Pixar of game studios when it comes to emotional manipulation.

like, you know your heart is being dragged through the mud in the most deliberate and calculated way possible but damn it, you are INTO IT. And you just know by playing you are being a willful instigator in a sort of personalized theater of emotional warfare  but you like it that way.  You have been made into a soggy mess by a video game where you can make out with your dog in public.  This is a game where you can fart on people’s heads and gay adopt kids and become rich enough to literally own every house in the country  baking pies in a  small hamlet, and still be invested enough to experience feelings of utter ruination. 

I’d just like to mention an awesome blog you should be following, especially if you like Fable